While beam loss issues have hardly been considered in detail for heavy ion fusion scenarios, recent heavy ion machine developments in different labs (European Organization for Nuclear Research(CERN), Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung (GSI), Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics (ITEP), Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC)) have shown the great importance of beam current limitations due to ion losses. Two aspects of beam losses in heavy ion accelerators are theoretically considered: (1) secondary neutron production due to lost ions, and (2) vacuum pressure instability due to charge exchange losses. Calculations are compared and found to be in good agreement with measured data. The application to a Heavy-Ion Driven Inertial Fusion (HIDIF) scenario is discussed.

Due to an error, the published version of the paper differed from the final version submitted by the authors. The section starting at page 271 with “The beams are well collimated …” and finishing at the end of the page, and the caption for figure 4 were to be replaced with an updated version, submitted on 20 May 2002, which follows underneath.

The coefficients Ai, that enter the fit formula for the stopping power (6), are given incorrectly in table 1. The table gives expressions for the quantities Ai2, rather than the coefficients Ai as printed. Therefore, the square root of the given expressions should be computed to obtain Ai. The given accuracy of the fit is reported correctly since it was obtained using the correct coefficients.